Sunday, December 02, 2012

Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table.

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remember how lbj got the southerners to budge just a hair on civil rights because deep down they agreed that americans of all stripes should be able to vote?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Only 8 Southerners in the entire Congress (House + Senate) voted for the Civil Rights Act. On the Voting Rights Act, only 4 Southerners in the Senate voted yes (Gore, Bass, Smathers, Yarborough).

I'm not going to defend Stone any further, I realize he's pretty controversial, to say the least. I don't think anyone can argue that the US hasn't utterly dominated geopolitics over the last 65 years, via direct military intervention, corporate domination of foreign resources, coups, sanctions, etc.. I don't think that's a good thing, as I don't believe the supposed bogeymen could have been any worse. I'm trying to imagine what it must be like to be a Ugandan, a Libyan, a Palestinian, a Nicaraguan, a Chilean or a resident of Hiroshima or Ciudad Juarez at various points over the last 65 years when I say this.

All valid points, but try to imagine what it might have been like to be one of the 36 million Chinese who starved to death between 1958 and 1962 alone, the result of deliberate government policies; or the countless millions of Chinese who were killed and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. And of course that's not even mentioning the fate of Eastern and much of Central Europe, most recently documented in Anne Applebaum's highly acclaimed recent book, The Iron Curtain.

None of that negates the horrors of colonialism, neo-colonialism, foreign domination of natural resources, U.S. sponsored military coups, U.S. military invasions, or anything else. But to close with the cliched but still true central point about the cold war: All the voluntary refugee traffic was in one direction, headed away from the Communist states and towards the non-Communist ones. Sometimes actions speak a lot louder than words.

Nobody has adequately explained the Flynn effect. The best explanations I've seen are that better nutrition and fewer environmental toxins (lead!)are allowing people to better reach their genetic potential. Epigenetics are a plausible explanation as well. Also, it appears the Flynn effect has been tapering off in recent years, which would support the nutrition/environmental toxins hypothesis. Any argument that IQ isn't measuring something innate and genetic founders on the fact that we can't seem to make meaningful, lasting improvements in IQ. There are plenty of ways to lower IQ, but we don't know how to raise it. That suggests that everybody has a capped potential IQ based on genetic/epigentic factors; things like malnutrition, a variety of toxins, and being raised by wolves can all prevent you from reaching that potential. But nothing seems to be able to push you past it.

And so what do we try to do, given the above statement: Enact policies that try to enable everyone to reach his full genetic potential? Or sit around crowing about how stupid poor people are?

Crack heads do not deserve to keep their kids. Today, we not only let them keep them, but we throw money down a bottomless pit to facilitate the child's abuse and neglect.

Children of neglectful drug addicts are regularly taken from their homes. If anything the problem is that CPS units around the country are a little too active, from what I hear. What you're describing sounds like an epidemic, but I just haven't read the stories I'd expect to be reading regularly if there indeed was an epidemic. What's the solution, in these cases? Is there a failure of reporting? Is it that you see CPS units around the country failing to act when crack moms are repeatedly arrested for drug offenses?

In any case, most states lean right at the state government level, so why is this a problem created by liberals? Why aren't our right leaning state legislatures, where they exist, addressing this problem?

The average American in the year 1900 had an I.Q. that by today’s standards would measure about 67. Since the traditional definition of mental retardation was an I.Q. of less than 70, that leads to the remarkable conclusion that a majority of Americans a century ago would count today as intellectually disabled.

This doesn't pass any sort of smell test, anywhere, ever.

No thank you. You may not like the standard that our society has decided upon for the safety net, but society does have a standard. It is a standard of living that has been arrived at and is ever evolving as things change (productivity, expectations, wealth of the nation). There is no universal set of things that determine now and forever what that standard should be.

In any case, it's not a safety net, it's social insurance.

Ray seems willfully oblivious to the simple fact that the rules of welfare and SSI allow recipients to actually earn additional income. Think about that for a minute! Instead of making a dollar for dollar deduction, we actually let those lazy, crippled pricks keep a percentage of earnings up to a point, past which they lost every additional dollar along with their health insurance. That's the money with which people purchase $299 big screen teevees, and used iPods, and such.

Sickening, I know, but I wanted to throw a fact or two Ray's way, just to watch him die. Don't know the exact figure for welfare, but for SSI you lose $1 for every $2 you earn over $84 per month.

It involves a curious phrase, "incentivizing work". Welfare recipient sees something shiny. Welfare receipient lays down crack pipe and seeks gainful employment in order to purchase shiny thing. You know, pretty much the same way Ray works for things he wants. Well, pads his bill in order to get the things he wants.

You know, I start each day vowing to be nicer to Ray, but then he just has to go and post...

That's true, but as that 1957 act was pretty weak tea and is generally forgotten, it's understandable that mefisto would have thought the voting act under discussion was the one with actual teeth in it, the 1965 one signed into law by President LBJ.

I agree - this is what I mean. I am not against socialism or wealth distibution, nor am I afraid to call it what it is.

Fair enough.

If only the Chicken Littles here would take this same tack.

However, I disagree that this will really destroy the incentive to work hard. As Harveys said, there are about 4% of the people who are just not that into the whole wackadoodle system of, you know, working for a living. I actually suspect that if you throw in a bunch of people who are artists and dreamers etc,. but also don't like a part-time-job standard of living, you might get more like 8-10%. (Maybe not for the their whole lives... but hell, have you BEEN to Portland??)

Incentive can't be unaffected. If I tell you I'll give you $100 for free, or $120 if you spend all day painting my house with me, you'll very likely take the free $100.

The effort to guarantee everyone at least a low middle class lifestyle through wealth redistribution strikes the familiar theme that runs through liberalism: reducing differences between people, striving to make everyone the same. Rich/poor, gay/straight, male/female, black/white, smart/dumb... And their insistence that there are no true differences between people is ironic, given that they claim to want to celebrate diversity.

Incentive can't be unaffected. If I tell you I'll give you $100 for free, or $120 if you spend all day painting my house with me, you'll very likely take the free $100.

Eh, that depends of what I can I do with the supposedly free time I have taking the $100 offer. If I have nothing else on hand, earning an extra $20 while showing you (a potential continuing client) that I do good work is valuable to me.

Teachers for instance supposedly have a lot of free time, but pick up coaching and club assignments for 'free', or a small stipend. According to Ray's theory, teachers should be the laziest bastards of them all since they only officially work for 8-3.

Incentive can't be unaffected. If I tell you I'll give you $100 for free, or $120 if you spend all day painting my house with me, you'll very likely take the free $100.

How about if I give you $120 for paint my house or a $100 free if you prove you need it, which will mean that you sign waivers and releases so I can investigate you, your bank accounts, properties, automobile ownership, members of your household, work history, tax returns, and so on?

And so what do we try to do, given the above statement: Enact policies that try to enable everyone to reach his full genetic potential? Or sit around crowing about how stupid poor people are?

Neither. Well, we can do some of the latter I suppose, but the sensible thing to do is recognize that most people who are impoverished long-term are in that boat because they lost the genetic lottery. There's no point in punishing them or blaming them, or trying to get them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; it's largely not their fault and they don't really have the capacity to pull themselves up.

We can either restructure our society to create things for these people to do (expensive, requires thought), or just put them on the dole and try not to think about them too much (slightly less expensive, but creates unforeseen consequences). Or, I guess we could round em up and put them in work camps or something, but that seems to make people uncomfortable. So the dole it is. We just need to be careful to calibrate it such that we don't incentivize people who COULD make something of their lives choose to be on the dole.

Teachers for instance supposedly have a lot of free time, but pick up coaching and club assignments for 'free', or a small stipend. According to Ray's theory, teachers should be the laziest bastards of them all since they only officially work for 8-3.

I've never said teachers were lazy; I've said they work few hours relative to the benefits they get. And (hilariously, given the argument you were trying to make), the fact that they can pick up coaching and club assignments for free or for a small stipend proves it.

the familiar theme that runs through liberalism: reducing differences between people, striving to make everyone the same. Rich/poor, gay/straight, male/female, black/white, smart/dumb... And their insistence that there are no true differences between people is ironic, given that they claim to want to celebrate diversity.

Proving once again that Ray really doesn't understand Liberal thought at all. Such is life.

There's no point in punishing them or blaming them, or trying to get them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; it's largely not their fault and they don't really have the capacity to pull themselves up.

What percentage? None of them have the capacity? 5%, 50%, 95% - I ask because your statement implies none of them have the capability and they should be essentially considered societal sunk cost.

So what percent are hopeless? What percent need to have the capability (their issue is something other than "bad genetics") such that it would be worth soceities time and effort to try to hep them get out of their situation? Are you so confident in your numbers you are willing to essentially give up on those people?

As to leaded gasoline, we can safely say that leaded gasoline helped provide America and the world with unprecedented freedom and fueled tremendous prosperity. We don’t use leaded gasoline in the United States anymore, but more because people simply don’t like the idea of leaded gasoline as opposed to any body of science showing that it caused anybody any harm. It’s the dose that makes the poison, and there never was enough lead in the ambient environment to threaten health.

Any argument that IQ isn't measuring something innate and genetic founders on the fact that we can't seem to make meaningful, lasting improvements in IQ. There are plenty of ways to lower IQ, but we don't know how to raise it. That suggests that everybody has a capped potential IQ based on genetic/epigentic factors

While it may suggest that IQ (which as you must acknowledge not a particularly awesome metric) is capped biologically - it does not follow that it's capped DIFFERENTIALLY - that YOUR IQ is capped at 140 and MINE is capped at 170. Maybe we are both capped at 170, or 200.

Because you can't measure "IQ cap" or "potential IQ" you can only measure "current IQ", and associate genetic variants with that IQ statistically. And there are assuredly 1000s of potentially interacting _genetic_ factors, so there are an extremely large number of possible combinations.

...and punted back and forth between there and a dozen different foster homes, until they are so ###### up nobody will adopt them. Foster homes are great as temporary housing for kids from the time CPS has to intervene until adoption, but if CPS has to intervene more than once, that should be it.

Incentive can't be unaffected. If I tell you I'll give you $100 for free, or $120 if you spend all day painting my house with me, you'll very likely take the free $100.

Wouldn't you just take both? I mean, assuming you had nothing better to do and $220 was a meaningful sum.

But yes, you can manufacture numbers. I mean, why not say $100 for free or $10 and a kick in the ass to paint my house? Would you rather be rich, or dead? Or put them in context. Instead of $100/$120 it's 0.10 and 0.12. I'll won't even answer my email for 10 cents. There are certainly people who won't for $100 either.

Sickening, I know, but I wanted to throw a fact or two Ray's way. Don't know the exact figure for welfare, but for SSI you lose $1 for every $2 you earn over $84 per month.

That's for the SSI-Aged? For the SSI-DI there's the rule that working indicates you're not disabled by definition and can easily result in your benefits being terminated.

SSI-DI. I've been fairly involved in a family member's case, at least enough to read through the rules a number of times, and from talking with her case worker it's clear she needs to be careful. When her case gets reviewed, too much work will be evidence used against her. One day of work a month won't get her booted, but 20 hours a week surely could. I don't know where the line is. I imagine it moves. In any case, it wouldn't make much sense for her to work more than one day a month. If she worked one day a week, once we factor in the deductions, that $299 tv would cost her $533.

No idea why the incentives aren't on a curve, though the rules on Medicaid aren't bad. If you recover and can go back to work, you keep your Medicaid eligibility until you make around 25k a year, at which point other things kick in that help low income people buy insurance.

I agree - this is what I mean. I am not against socialism or wealth distibution, nor am I afraid to call it what it is.

Fair enough.

If only the Chicken Littles here would take this same tack.

I'm all for tax rates moving upward so that the wealthy finally start paying for what they're getting.

I'm also all for government getting out of the business of helping the wealthy steal from the poor. It's not wealth re-distribution, boys and girls, it's wealth re-re-distribution. Watch the tape of Scott Walker conniving with his billionaire backer to invent laws that suppress wages for an exhibit even Ray can understand.

What percentage? None of them have the capacity? 5%, 50%, 95% - I ask because your statement implies none of them have the capability and they should be essentially considered societal sunk cost.

Read more carefully; I specified in the post you quoted that my number was "most" not "all".

So what percent are hopeless? What percent need to have the capability (their issue is something other than "bad genetics") such that it wold be worth soceities time and effort to try to hep them get out of their situation? Are you so confident in your numbers you are willing to essentially give up on those people?

I'd argue that anybody who's been impoverished long term is probably hopeless. Anybody can be poor; there are any number of things that can cause it. But people who have the capacity to fix it usually do fix it given time. But long term poverty that persists for decades; that's usually the result of stupidity, mental illness, addiction, physical disability or some fun combination of the four.

But let's focus here, I'm not entirely sure of the point you're making. If you're arguing that their poverty is their fault and they CAN change their circumstances, then why shouldn't we blame them and expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? You can't have it both ways here.

I'm saying that we should provide a safety net for these people. If they want to escape poverty, I'm certainly not going to stand in their way. But wouldn't we be better off directing our resources on the people who have recently fallen into the system rather than those who have been in it for decades?

And so what do we try to do, given the above statement: Enact policies that try to enable everyone to reach his full genetic potential? Or sit around crowing about how stupid poor people are?

Neither. Well, we can do some of the latter I suppose, but the sensible thing to do is recognize that most people who are impoverished long-term are in that boat because they lost the genetic lottery. There's no point in punishing them or blaming them, or trying to get them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; it's largely not their fault and they don't really have the capacity to pull themselves up.

We can either restructure our society to create things for these people to do (expensive, requires thought), or just put them on the dole and try not to think about them too much (slightly less expensive, but creates unforeseen consequences). Or, I guess we could round em up and put them in work camps or something, but that seems to make people uncomfortable. So the dole it is. We just need to be careful to calibrate it such that we don't incentivize people who COULD make something of their lives choose to be on the dole.

That either ignores or dismisses without explanation the first mentioned alternative, of trying to bring everyone up to his full genetic potential, rather than just consigning potentially bright children to fester in the mind-numbing conditions of their home environments. This has nothing to do with "the dole", and everything to do with early childhood education and nutrition.

I'm all for tax rates moving upward so that the wealthy finally start paying for what they're getting.

I'm also all for government getting out of the business of helping the wealthy steal from the poor. It's not wealth re-distribution, boys and girls, it's wealth re-re-distribution. [Watch the tape of Scott Walker conniving with his billionaire backer to invent laws that suppress wages for an exhibit even Ray can understand.]***

He's here all week, ladies and gentlemen! See him while you can! He changes his stage name occasionally.

Hey, any time you want to start making the case that my tax dollars that go to, for example, public airport construction, don't massively benefit the major stakeholders in FedEx, but benefit not at all the Staples clerk who's never going to ride an airplane, feel free.

But heckling's so much easier on the nerves, right?

***Cut by DJS because, presumably, it's inconvenient for him to acknowledge those darned facts.

I'm imagining Good Face right now as the Head Gamesmaster of the Hunger Games.

Hey, any time you want to start making the case that my tax dollars that go to, for example, public airport construction, don't massively benefit the major stakeholders in FedEx but benefit the Staples clerk who's never going to ride an airplane, feel free.

Public funds used for airport construction ain't a libertarian thing. Government investment in every damn thing, well, that's a liberal thing. Will someone please save the poor liberals from the beliefs of liberals?

How exactly did all these poor people that don't use airports pay for airports anyway? There must be an epidemic of incredibly rich poor people.

On Thursday the British government lifted its 19-month-old moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, which it imposed after exploratory shale-gas drilling in Lancashire prompted two minor tremors last year. By "minor," we mean that a couple of dozen people felt some shaking, but otherwise there was no damage.

The end of the moratorium takes Britain one step closer to tapping its domestic shale gas, which has the eco-left experiencing shaking fits of its own. But with the U.K. in danger of slipping into triple-dip recession, Prime Minister David Cameron doesn't appear to care anymore what the fear-mongers have to say.

Hey, any time you want to start making the case that my tax dollars that go to, for example, public airport construction, don't massively benefit the major stakeholders in FedEx but benefit the Staples clerk who's never going to ride an airplane, feel free.

Public funds used for airport construction ain't a libertarian thing. Government investment in every damn thing, well, that's a liberal thing. Will someone please save the poor liberals from the beliefs of liberals?

I'll see if I can get Fred Smith on the phone once he sobers up from Burning Man.

I'd argue that anybody who's been impoverished long term is probably hopeless. Anybody can be poor; there are any number of things that can cause it. But people who have the capacity to fix it usually do fix it given time. But long term poverty that persists for decades; that's usually the result of stupidity, mental illness, addiction, physical disability or some fun combination of the four.

This is probably true, though I'm not fond of your "hopeless", and throwing physical disability in with addiction seems willfully stupid.

Given structural unemployment, those slightly more able will continually be pushing those who are by definition marginal into the ranks of the unemployed. Somebody's gonna be unemployed. There are those who will never work, those who will rarely work, and plenty who move in and out of the work force as their issues and difficulties ebb and flow.

I know you get off on sounding like a heartless prick, but it really only comes across as ignorant.

I'm imagining Good Face right now as the Head Gamesmaster of the Hunger Games.

Is that the chick with the sweet hat and all the makeup? Because her look was tight.

That either ignores or dismisses without explanation the first mentioned alternative, of trying to bring everyone up to his full genetic potential, rather than just consigning potentially bright children to fester in the mind-numbing conditions of their home environments. This has nothing to do with "the dole", and everything to do with early childhood education and nutrition.

Except I've advocated making sure everybody is fed sufficiently, so nutrition is covered. Otherwise, the problem is bad parents, who will, go figure, disproportionately be stupid. Are you advocating state workers carefully monitoring every parent to make sure the home environments meet your standards? Taking children away when they don't? Keep in mind, stupid parents tend to have stupid children, so spending money here is just perpetuating the problem.

Really, your post here is incoherent because your thoughts on the subject are incoherent. You don't understand the issues so you're posting based on emotional preferences.

The end of the moratorium takes Britain one step closer to tapping its domestic shale gas, which has the eco-left experiencing shaking fits of its own. But with the U.K. in danger of slipping into triple-dip recession, Prime Minister David Cameron doesn't appear to care anymore what the fear-mongers have to say.

....

So, there's no middle ground, where we prudently weigh the risks and benefits, and proceed intelligently? Anyone who wants reasonably complete information before engaging in wholesale production of energy of a kind that significantly affects the environment is 'fearmongering'?

But let's focus here, I'm not entirely sure of the point you're making. If you're arguing that their poverty is their fault and they CAN change their circumstances, then why shouldn't we blame them and expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? You can't have it both ways here.

I'm saying that we should provide a safety net for these people. If they want to escape poverty, I'm certainly not going to stand in their way. But wouldn't we be better off directing our resources on the people who have recently fallen into the system rather than those who have been in it for decades?

I am not trying to have it both ways. I am trying to understand what you are saying, so don't extrapolate what I might want from the questions I am asking. Anyway ...

What I want is simple. A safety net that provides enough for a reasonable standard of living (where the definition of reasonable does in fact change over time) and allows for the opporunity for folks to make their ways upwards into mainstream society. I don't want government in the business of deciding who is likely to be able to ascend and who isn't, governments tend to be terrible at that. Build the support system, make it available and structured to incent people to better themselves and then let the people do as they would.

Yes there is likely some waste there, but there is also strong economic benefits - just one example is the strong counter-cyclical spending built into the model. When the economy does well, there are jobs and wages are moving upwards gvoernment spending on the safety net drops. When the economy does poorly spending on the safety net rises. All automatically with less opportunity for politicians to screw it up in the moment.

Moral - because I think a safety net is a moral imperative in a civilized society.
Reasonably efficient - because you have incentives for workforce participation which is good.
Economically effective - because you have built in counter-cyclical spending.

Whether or not people stay "on the dole" or work there way upward or cycle depending on the ambient economy depends on many factors including their innate abilities (I have never claimed all people are the same) including their drive, intelligence and so on. SO long as their is a strong safety net and opportunity I am willing to let the individuals and free market take care of the rest - it is very good at that part of it.

And yes it ends up being somewhat redistributive for wealth. Oh darn. I somehow suspect the wealthy (and thus powerful) will manage to muddle through somehow very nicely.

I'd argue that anybody who's been impoverished long term is probably hopeless. Anybody can be poor; there are any number of things that can cause it. But people who have the capacity to fix it usually do fix it given time. But long term poverty that persists for decades; that's usually the result of stupidity, mental illness, addiction, physical disability or some fun combination of the four.

This is probably true, though I'm not fond of your "hopeless", and throwing physical disability in with addiction seems willfully stupid.

Well Something Other, a sober man would realize that I'm not equating physical disability with addiction; only pointing out that both are common causes of long term poverty. I don't suppose you've fallen off the wagon again? Let me know, I'd be happy to send you a twenty, if you promise not to drink it all up.

Given structural unemployment, those slightly more able will continually be pushing those who are by definition marginal into the ranks of the unemployed. Somebody's gonna be unemployed. There are those who will never work, those who will rarely work, and plenty who move in and out of the work force as their issues and difficulties ebb and flow.

I know you get off on sounding like a heartless prick, but it really only comes across as ignorant.

Grover Norquist expressed confidence on Thursday that Republican adherents to his rigid anti-tax hike platform would emerge victorious in upcoming budgetary scraps, joking that it would leave a bitter President Barack Obama to engage in a campaign of indiscriminately bombing "small countries" for his personal entertainment.

Speaking on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," Norquist argued that congressional Republicans had a number of weapons ready to wield against Obama and Democrats in order to ensure that there would be no spending increases or tax hikes.

“Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years,” Norquist said. “He's not going to have any fun at all; he may just have to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won't be any fun to be here, because he won't be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to.”

Norquist said that Republicans would be willing to use the threat of the sequester -- large spending cuts paired with tax hikes scheduled to kick in if a deal to avert the fiscal cliff isn't met by the end of the year -- to leverage Democrats, whom he said were fearful of that possibility. Norquist also claimed that GOP lawmakers would utilize continuing resolutions, or temporary appropriations bills used in the absence of an official budget, in order to chip away at spending.

Speaking of TGFs points, I'd love to see us as a country acknowledge that we need a reserve pool of unemployed people so as to provide Walmart and new businesses with cheap labor in boom times.

Not likely to happen, but it would change the tone of the discussion if we acknowledged that some chunk of the unemployed CAN'T be employed. It's like the conservative bromide that everyone can pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get ahead, when of course people who can't add well or read for comprehension or organize their thinking simply aren't capable of much more (in the current labor market) than pushing brooms, emptying garbage cans, and picking corn. Many of the people in the lowest wage tiers are there because they can't--ever, through no fault of their own--climb past them.

@2537 redux: I realize the possibility of penetrating your dense skull is zero, but that's one reason we have different tax rates: because of the very different returns people get on their tax dollars. If you were capable of giving the issue serious thought, you might be able to argue that top rates are already reasonably proportional to the return on investment. I'd then propose that they're not particularly close to reasonable, given the proportion of tax dollars that are spent essentially for the benefit of the already well off, and that a much higher top rate is justified.

I'd also argue that the laws as written suppress wages more than they increase them, therefore wealth has already--after work has been done but prior to paychecks being written is the simplest way to consider it--been redistributed upwards. Contracts in this country are far more often than not NOT freely arrived at. Hence my assertion that increasing top rates redistributes wealth that has already been redistributed from the less powerful to the more powerful through the suppression of wages, such as that practiced by Scott Walker and his pals in Wisconsin, and just practiced by Rick Snyder and the Republican legislators in Michigan.

This is particularly amusing considering I'm endorsing a safety net functionally identical to what you, BM, and numerous other liberal posters here have advocated for.

FWIW - I am trying to find out where your belief's regarding the incapable lead you. Hopefully I laid out my vision and it makes sense why to a certain degree who is incapable of advancement and who isn't is to a degree irrelevent from a (my) policy perspective (though it clearly matters on an individual and societal level).

This is one of the roots of my problems with much of the "IQ discussion", it tends not to lead to any concrete policies (policy changes) except occasionally in the educational or retraining area.

Note: I avoid the IQ based discussions for other areas as well as I have stated in many previous threads.

public airport construction, don't massively benefit the major stakeholders in FedEx, but benefit not at all the Staples clerk who's never going to ride an airplane, feel free.

Isn't this actually quite easy. Staples being a drop off point for FedEx gives the clerk their job.

Sure. I don't really think, though, that you thought I meant to cover every aspect, variation, and exigency in a short post. The benefit of airport construction is disproportionally in favor of the major stakeholders of FedEx (and Staples) as against the Staples clerk. It's therefore right for those stakeholders to pay more. What rates that translates into is the main issue, in my opinion, and certainly up for debate.

Of course, you might want to argue that a guy paying 25% on $10m in income is already paying more than a guy paying 25% on $10k in income; I'd argue that even that comparatively higher total isn't enough to cover the disproportional benefits of airport construction (and road construction, and troops in Germany, and police who will appear and make sure striking workers stay within very narrowly defined areas, and who provide vastly better services in wealthy neighborhoods than they do in Bed-Stuy, and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on).

On highway 12 in Wisconsin very near the Illinois border there is a sign "Watch for low flying airplanes" and what appears from the highway to be some very nice mansions somewhat clustered along a small runway.

No idea if it is privately owned or the degree to which the government might subsidize the Plutarch's Airfield, but I always am amused by it when I drive past (have never scene an airplane though I do keep watching).

my wife and i go back and forth on this minimum expected lifestyle (or whatever you want to term it) and from observation and years of running businesses i am adamant that 1 out of 25 people is just flat out not interested in a daily job. be it laziness or wanting to have flexibility or whatever you want to call it about 4 percent of a working population is going to be a square peg in a round hole.

so in my mind if a society has unemployment in the 4 percent range that economy has done what it could for the people who want to participate.

i am not going to get that caught up in the remainder save for the infirm, the very aged, the very young or the mentally unstable.

as for the rest--are there no prisons? are there no workhouses?

Harvey, you must remember Bringing Up Father, the comic strip.

Bringing Up Father was about an Irish guy, Jiggs, who came into a lot of money (the backstory changed over time) and still wanted to go down to the tavern and eat corned beef and cabbage. He had a social climbing wife, Maggie.

One of the other characters was Bimmy, evidently the brother of one of them. Bimmy's main function was to sleep on the couch of Maggie and Jiggs. He was a sponging relative.

I'm assuming this was a common trope of the time. Families that were doing well were likely to have a Bimmy or a maiden aunt or a grandparent in their house. If there is a safety net you have a better chance of keeping them out of your house. So it's not a choice between a safety net and nothing, it's more likely a choice between a safety net and Bimmy in your house.

Anyway, laziness is a positive human trait, that's why it's survived. I don't want an entire society of workaholics, warmongers, and cocaine addicts. In the right hands the desire to avoid work can lead people to invent labor saving inventions.

I think there are lots of them-aren't "executive airports" generally private?

Yes.

Larger airports are managed by Airport Authorities, which are public or quasi/public/private consortiums comparable to Seaport Authorities. In fact in some places the same authority oversees both airport(s) and seaport(s).

Well Something Other, a sober man would realize that I'm not equating physical disability with addiction; only pointing out that both are common causes of long term poverty. I don't suppose you've fallen off the wagon again? Let me know, I'd be happy to send you a twenty, if you promise not to drink it all up.

"Something Other" than what?

In any case, someone who wasn't a crackhead might be able to construct a sentence that doesn't make him sound like the village idiot; you know, something that isn't on the order of, I enjoy apples, oranges, bananas, and wallets.

Keep in mind, stupid parents tend to have stupid children, so spending money here is just perpetuating the problem.

And more of them.

Raising eveyrone to their "genetic potential" will still result in some people being way smarter than others and the smarter people will still tend strongly to make more money.

The only thing that might do is help some people become smart enough to handle 21st century jobs and at least stanch the mismatch between 21st century jobs and our citizens' intelligence, but that benefit can be replicated much more cheaply by re-industrialization and protectionism.

you guys have no idea what it's like to be in love with a bleeding heart. the literal price i have paid because she i am a s8cker for a pretty face and someone who likes animals. i thought it was a good thing when she admired my hounds and horses.

In any case, someone who wasn't a crackhead might be able to construct a sentence that doesn't make him sound like the village idiot; you know, something that isn't on the order of, I enjoy apples, oranges, bananas, and wallets.

Oh, wait, you don't know.

Hehe, nice try, but it's a bit late to play dumb(er). I suppose you managed to get yourself banned on the old account, which is why you're playing this silly game. And I suppose you'll be right back there soon enough.

Sure. I don't really think, though, that you thought I meant to cover every aspect, variation, and exigency in a short post. The benefit of airport construction is disproportionally in favor of the major stakeholders of FedEx (and Staples) as against the Staples clerk. It's therefore right for those stakeholders to pay more. What rates that translates into is the main issue, in my opinion, and certainly up for debate.

I live in central Florida so every plane that fly's over brings jobs to the "working class" more so than to the rich. The rich may benefit more in terms of amount of money and might pay less but if they closed the airports here the rich would all leave and the poor would be without jobs and their means to relocate would not be nearly as good.

Plus as you stated the rich are the ones paying for flights which means they will pay a tax that non-flyers do not.

Taxes tend to even out for the most part. Why should a person with no kids pay for public schools? It doesn't directly benefit them but it does indirectly benefit them. The rich will never use medicaid, the poor will not use airports as much, but indirectly they both benefit.

And yes it ends up being somewhat redistributive for wealth. Oh darn. I somehow suspect the wealthy (and thus powerful) will manage to muddle through somehow very nicely.

Does it, though? Countering our currently low higher marginal rates we have an impressive array of powerful forces aimed at suppressing wages and demanding unemployment in the form of reserve pools of cheap labor for when the next boom rolls around. One reason there has been a split in the GOP on immigration is that the business community wants cheap, immigrant labor. By manipulating and buying policy it drives down wages.

The actual number of people who simply cannot work and will never be able to work, AND who are being supported primarily by social insurance programs is small.

I'd argue that as currently structured, our tax rates and social insurance expenditures aren't redistributive in anything like the sense that is commonly meant by that phrase.

To claim that wealth is being redistributed downward by our tax code is to accept that there is something natural about this country's wage structure; that wealth, for the most part, isn't the result of legalized suppression of wages or outright theft in its various guises.

How does the current era's increasing rate of income inequality make it better than at any other point in our history?

I am not sure that taxes are the reason for that. I believe the divide is increasing because the majority of the jobs lost in this country to overseas affected the middle class the most, not because taxes have benefited the rich more now than ever.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nearly four in 10 U.S. residents say the severity of recent natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy is evidence the world is coming to an end, as predicted by the Bible, while more than six in 10 blame it on climate change, according to a poll released on Thursday.

The survey by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with the Religion News Service found political and religious disagreement on what is behind severe weather, which this year has included extreme heat and drought.

Most Catholics (60 percent) and white non-evangelical Protestants (65 percent) say they believe disasters like hurricanes and floods are the result of climate change.

But nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of white evangelical Protestants say they think the storms are evidence of the "end times" as predicted by the Bible.

Overall, 36 percent point to end times and 63 percent to climate change.

PRRI research director Daniel Cox said that some respondents - including 75 percent of non-white Protestants - believe extreme weather is both evidence of end times and the result of climate change.

"No one really knows how (end times) would look and how God would bring it about," Cox said.

Politics also color perceptions of the weather, the survey found. More than three-quarters of Democrats and six in 10 independents believe that the weather has become more extreme over the last few years, while less than half of Republicans say they have perceived such a shift.

Nearly four in 10 U.S. residents say the severity of recent natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy is evidence the world is coming to an end, as predicted by the Bible, while more than six in 10 blame it on climate change, according to a poll released on Thursday.

there is no way these numbers are right. I am guessing the tin hat crowd that believes that Superstorm Sandy is evidence that the US/USSR(of course they still exist) has created a weather weapon is greater than 1 out of 10:)

The Democrats are in a strong position with the public as they engage in negotiations to find a solution to the fiscal cliff crisis. Barack Obama’s first post-reelection job approval rating has risen to 55%, up five points since July and 11 points since the start of the year. Obama’s job rating is markedly higher than George W. Bush’s first job measure (48%) after he won reelection in 2004.

When it comes to the reaching an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, 55% say Obama is making a serious effort to work with Republicans. But just 32% say Republican leaders are making a serious effort to work with Obama on a deficit deal.

... Just 25% approve of the way Republican leaders in Congress are doing their jobs, while 40% approve of Democratic leaders’ job performance. And the GOP’s lead negotiator, House Speaker John Boehner, is viewed more unfavorably (40%) than favorably (28%).

... By a 53% to 33% margin, the public sees the Republican Party, rather than the Democratic Party, as “more extreme in its positions.” Democrats, on the other hand, are seen as “more willing to work with leaders from the other party” by roughly two-to-one (53% vs. 27%).

... the only deficit reduction proposals that garner more support than opposition – among 12 items tested – are those that affect higher income Americans, either directly or indirectly. Of the 12, by far the most widely supported option is raising taxes on incomes over $250,000; fully 69% approve of that proposal. Narrow majorities also favor limiting the deductions a taxpayer can claim (54% approve) and raising the tax rate on investment income (52%).

... there has been no improvement in the Republican Party’s image over the past year. The job approval rating of Republican congressional leaders, which fell to just 22% in August of 2011 after the debt ceiling debate, stands virtually unchanged at 25% today. Meanwhile, the job rating for both Democratic leaders in Congress (now 40% up from 29% in August 2011) and Obama (55% up from 43%) have rebounded by double-digits.

The recovery in Obama’s job approval ratings is particularly notable; other than a brief spike following the killing of Osama bin Laden, Obama’s approval has not been significantly above 50% since September of his first year in office.

Funny, I was thinking Ray sounded a bit jealous over those strapping young bucks with their big TV's and cell phones who aren't working while he's toiling away busting his hump doing...well, whatever it is he does. I'm sure it's hard work.

I only hope everyone has been taking notes, because between Sugar Loaf and Ray and GF, this has been one hell of an ongoing seminar in ethics and economics. Too bad Kehoskie isn't here to raise the intellectual level even more.

On highway 12 in Wisconsin very near the Illinois border there is a sign "Watch for low flying airplanes" and what appears from the highway to be some very nice mansions somewhat clustered along a small runway.

Is that the one just NE of Genoa City? I recall one right near the road, but there's also one (really small) on Grand Geneva's property, in fact the golf cart path on the Highlands course goes within 30 yards of the airstrip on a few different holes.

Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson was publicly admonished by the Commission on Judicial Performance, which said the judge’s comments breached judicial ethics and created an impression of bias against the victim.

At sentencing in 2008, Johnson denied a prosecutor’s call to impose a 16-year prison term on Metin Gurel, who had been convicted of rape, forcible oral copulation, domestic battery, stalking and making threats against his former live-in girlfriend.

On the day he raped her, prosecutors said, Gurel had threatened to mutilate the woman’s face and vagina with a screwdriver he had heated up.

Johnson instead imposed a six-year sentence.

“I’m not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something,” the judge said, according to documents released Thursday. “If someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage in inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case.

"That tells me that the victim in this case, although she wasn’t necessarily willing, she didn’t put up a fight,” the judge said.

The judge, who has been with the Orange County Superior Court since 2000, also declared the rape “technical,” and not “a real, live criminal case.”

“To treat this case like the rape cases that we all hear about is an insult to victims of rape,” the judge said. “I think it’s an insult. I think it trivializes a rape.”